Monday, January 1, 2018

This post is part of an ongoing
(although intermittent) series of fictional chats between an architect and an
intern in the architect’s Northern California studio.

I.Are you ready?

A.Certainly.

I.Okay.Here it
is:Design Committees.They seem to be part of the status quo and I wonder what you have to say about
them.I know we joke about them, but…

A.They’re really not a joking matter. Another layer of filter
fabric.When you mention design committees
I also think of their first cousins planning departments andCC&Rs.The good news is that they have helped preserve some of the nostalgic qualities of our built environments –
I’m thinking of places like Santa Barbara, Ferndale,
and The Sea Ranch here in California.Without governing oversight they all
would be infused with McDonalds, Jiffy Lubes and Tuscan spec houses.Remember
our chats about diversity?Well, here is
a case for unity and you may remember
that one of the perils of too much unity can be an inability to adapt to change.How do you like solar panels on those Santa Barbara moss and lichen covered Spanish roof tiles?Perhaps a bit incongruous.

We
are trying to make sense of things with words and numbers and limited insight…but that’s another
story.I think the most unfortunate part
of governing design review and
interventionisthat whileit may help upgrade projects near
the bottom of the barrel, it
invariably also downgrades the cream near the top.Work
with visionbeyond the status quo doesn’t
fit neatly into approved sets of pre-established
rules and regulations and are all too often castigated because of their lack of congruity with them.

Where
design review really fails is in its inability to grapple with the underlying
big picture issues. We humans
are primarily visually oriented and it’s no surprise that most design review focuses on evaluating
facades and appeasing neighbors.Of vastly greater significance are
intentions, responding to the spirit of the place, and adapting to the physical reality of the land itself.

I.How do you design review a project’s “Spirit of the
Place”?

A.You want to play hardball now?Okay. Two hundred years ago there was moresimilarity between places – take houses for
the sake of argument – because most inhabitants,
their material availability, and their construction technology had a similarity about them. That is just
not the case with a culture as fast changing anddiverse as ours is today. Peoples’ dreams, preferences, and
ideas of home can and are spread
all over the map – literally.

I.So what do you think is an appropriate response to today’s
potpourri of styles?In thesame town, if not the same neighborhood?

A.The issue is one of values.Rather than an agreed upon visual similarity –like wearing
private school uniforms – I favor searching for ways to make buildings as thoughtfully and skillfully as we can.Some of us may actually do that,but thereare manyamong uswho just don’t care about doing things better.I might be more sympathetic to design reviews that
nurtured sincerity, purpose, and intent rather
than aesthetic judgments about roof
slope, window placement, and impact on pre-existing
neighbors who didn’t think their project through sufficiently to begin with.Let’s say we have a project which genuinely tries to embrace all these things, but the building, even its
visual qualities – is still awful.I
suppose we then have to live with
the design review’s determination as to whether there should bemore
visual unity or diversity.It’s a little
like relying on one’s union to help determine
whether we should vote more progressively or conservatively.

I.You know what I’m thinking?

A.No, what?

I.Animal Farm. You’re saying that there were the
simple straightforward houses of the past
gatheredinto neighborhoods that tended to have a consistency brought about
by consistency of their circumstances – similar
culture, economy, material availability, and
so forth.I think of traditional Italian
hillside towns.And then today it is not
uncommon to have neighborhoods with
somewhat diverse cultures and economies.And of course material availability is primarily
an economic issue.

A.Exactly.Greater
economic status combined with exposure to a plethora of stylisticpossibilities leaves the door wide
open. And because we are so easily satisfied with
appearances, whether real or not, the integrity of making buildings has diminished accordingly. And very few of us
really notice or care.By the way, a beautifully presented mini treatise on this
issue is included in The Place of Houses’ discussion on Edgartown in Massachusetts.

I.I’ll check it out, but let’s say there is a Spanish
Hacienda set well back off the street, aWestern
Ranch House, a Neutra, and a handful of Tuscan knock-offs. The owners are all good, well-meaning citizens.Is there a problem?

A.There is only a problem when viewed through the lens of our
most successful achievements with
the built environment. In your scenario the individual buildings don’t seem to be working either with
the landscape or with each other to achieve a greater
whole.This falls short by most people’s
standards for grouping buildings. Because
of unprecedented rate of change and
progress we are experiencing for us to know. Eventually
all this probably has nothing to do with
us – it’s probably some unknowable sphere of energy and indiscriminant elements.

I.Let’s not go there.

A.I like to think that in the next 10 to 100 thousand years
human population will havereduced
to a few billion or so with a truly stable population (although still for only
an epoch or two).Half the other species will probably be
extinct, but the remaining half might
be left to live their lives free from our continuous meddling and management.

I.Do I sense the sliding scale of diversity, unity, order and
chaos coming back into play here?

A.It’s a Catch 22.Progressives may argue for more localized diversity of people, butI wonder
how they square this with localized diversity of flora and fauna.Are zebra mussels
in the Great Lakes, boas in the Everglades, Pampas Grass along the Pacific coast a positive
thing?Ecologically speaking the bottom
line is whatever is most conducive
for survival…and that’s a future our eyes cannot see.

I.So what about Design Review?

A.I suppose we have to eat crow or swallow a bitter pill for
now and hope for the best in the
future because the process is beautiful, destructive, confused, and contradictory.And if that synopsis doesn’t quite make sense then we can at least take some solace in the thought that the
universe and everything in it are not under any obligation to make sense to us anyway.